My Two Favorite Movies

It’s a very popular blogging exercise slash cliche to post top ten lists.  What ten CDs would you take to a deserted island? What are you top ten favorite <fill in the blank>?

Frankly, it’s too hard for me to pick my top ten favorite anything. That’s a lot of selections, all of which need to be more important and favored by me than any single thing in the category outside of the top ten. Tastes change with age and experience. If I was forced onto a deserted island 15 years ago with my top ten CD list at the time, I would be ready to throw myself into the raging sea, I’d be so freaking sick of the music!

 

That said, I don’t want to be accused of lacking some kind of commitment in this area. I have kept a draft of a list of top ten movies, adding selections as I remember and come across candidates for this exclusive membership.  Honestly, I only have two movies.  Others pop in and out based on my mood and relative interests at the time. For example, when I go through an old school mafia phase, watch out! Here comes Godfather I & II, Goodfellas, Casino..heavy on Scorcese and Coppola. Or, when the Lord of the Rings came out, I was lost in that world for three years of sequels. That faded away much as the memory of the Ring did in the beginning.

To me, a great movie is one where I try to remember how different the world seemed to me after seeing the movie vs. before viewing it, for the first time. I actually wish I could experience a great movie again, for the first time.

I only have two of these, and the rankings are very clear in my mind.

The Matrix (1999)

The Matrix came out in April of 1999, that’s how clearly I remember its impact. It came in the wake of the year’s monster, The Phantom Menace. The hype for the Star Wars movie was so great and so overwhelming (and ultimately so disappointing), that The Matrix easily slipped silently into theaters.  I distinctly remember going into the theater based on the style and special effects portrayed in the trailer. That was the hook for me. However, the story and the philosophical challenges layered throughout captured me, and completely blew me away. I was analyzing and talking about that movie for months afterwards, and saw it in the theaters several more times. To this day, it remains the best of the trilogy (the Wachowsky brothers fell into a clear and certain self indugence for the last two movies).

Cidade de Deus (City of God – 2002)

Though a newer film, this has risen to the top of my list. What does it have going for it? First off, it’s a Brazilian movie in Portuguese. I have a lot of great memories traveling in Brazil, and remember the emotions I felt upon first hearing the Portuguese language (Brazilian syle) for the first time. Watching this movie for the first time was a miracle. My expectations were low, as that I knew nothing about this film. Directed by Fernando Mereilles, the weaving narrative and stylistic vision of the movie was extraordinary. Using very few professional actors, with many of the roles filled by the same type of street kid portrayed in the movie, Mereilles is able to create a world painted with eye flinching violence, moments of heartbreaking vulnerability, moody landscapes, hilarious (and ironic) third person narration, and utterly creative shifting of the storytelling.

This epic story set deep in the ghettos of Rio de Janeiro follows the experiences of a character named Rocket over the course of about 12 years into his late teenaged years. The story structure is inventive; I would most closely compare it to Pulp Fiction, but without the shocking turns that made Tarantino’s movie so groundbreaking. Rocket also narrates the story, and in order to give the audience a full, rich story, he dives into subplots, reverses direction, pulls the viewers down alleys only to turn them around and start back a different way. 

The film begins with the rythmic cadence of Samba music, with the focus on a chicken tied up, observing the people of the ghetto preparing other chickens. The audience sees the chicken watching this buddies get defeathered, chopped, boiled, and becomes more and more agitated.  Eventually escaping, this beautiful introduction crosses the path of the main story, where the chicken is being chased by a gang of teenagers and young adults, guns a-blazing. Immediately, the audience is thrust into the chaos of the ghetto.  Soon after, Rocket explains that to understand the story, he has to take us back to the beginning. Bam! Shift in time and mood, keeping the viewer off guard.

The movie is loud and violent and full of large characters. A few brilliant misdirections lead the viewers to question their own assumptions and keep them on edge.  In the eye of this hurricane, this hard ghetto life, Mereilles places a few intimate moments of utterly devastating vulnerability. A hint of redemption comes and goes, and the violence goes into overdrive en route to the conclusion of the film.

My favorite scene in the movie comes after a kid (photo of this scene is directly above this paragraph) is forced by the sociopathic gang leader to kill a young street urchin breaking the rules . The scene is all noise and talk and distraction. Only after he kills in cold blood (clearly upset by it), the tragedy of the lives of these kids and the hopelessness is captured by a simple framing of the killer boy’s gun against unfocused dead boy in the background. The gang has moved on, and the shot is accompanied by silence. What makes this shot so incredible is how Mereilles has the patience to allow the camera to linger for several seconds, which has the effect of completely pulling the audience back into the consequences of the violence of this sometimes charming gang leader.

I never tire of watching this movie. I marvel at the freshness of the style and the fluidity of the story’s development. I find myself wishing that certain key plot points went in different, more happy directions, but of course, it would rob me of the twists  pulling all the characters to their stories’ ultimate conclusion.